Two extremes

@devs
That's what Subnautica is: 2 extremes. SN is a genuine great game. It's fun, intriguing, exiting, captivating and a bunch of other superlatives. On the other hand it's performance on Xbox One is truly abysmal. I find I can say that for an early access game because they say it's nearly finished. But it just doesn't run on XB1. It's like they try to make it run on a Pentium. And be honest (no PC master jokes needed here) , XB1 is no Pentium. AC Origins and The Division. Both open world games with tonnes of detail look and perform superbly on the same machine.
SN in contrast can't draw a seafloor 20m ahead. Draw in and pop-up are rife. Numerous times I have fallen through the bottom because it wasn't drawn yet when I put my Prawn down. If I was lucky, there was a cave beneath it so I could land there. Otherwise the Prawn would keep falling 3000-4000-5000 meters. Numerous times I missed an important wreck with dearly needed stuff inside because it wasn't drawn when I passed the spot. I only found them by sheer luck when I stopped moving to take a sip of my coffee or by intentional scanning for databoxes, going to designated point and waiting there until everything was drawn.
Sand sharks and Ampeels are black squares when bloom is turned on. Initial loading of the game takes one-hundred-and-eighty-five seconds (185 !)
That added a good few hours to my game. And although falling through the floor and invisible wrecks actually break the game, why can't I stop playing it? I've clocked in more than 75 hours in 2 weeks. A game of extremes.
But seriously devs: get it together. If AC origins and Forza can run as they do on XB1, then SN should do much better than it does now. (upd. 84)
But seriously devs no.2: thank you so much for Subnautica. It's one of the best I've played in a long time (when i see past performance that is). I adore the underwater setting, the alien stuff, the simple but captivating story and I applaud the single player choice! I'm really curious how 1.0 will perform and what will come next.

Comments

The thing about performance and from what I can gather in terms of performance. They are using Unity in a way for which it was not designed. Their world and chunk loading are very intensive and have to be brute forced it seems. The Xbone simply doesn't have the power to do that properly or it's HDD is too slow, so in a way they are probably utilizing the Xbone hardware in a way it shouldn't be used. But with the PC version release back in January, they can focus on performance optimization for the Xbone/Oculus v1.0 release.

Oh and even the mighty PC master race is these having issue, to a lesser extend of course, but still ie: loading from a Samsung EVO850 SSD takes roughly 30 seconds. That's also nothing to write home about, but it does take away the world stutter for the most part...

I guess you can say, for now the Xbone is boned That is until they can get a handle on these performance issues, which I assume will be during their Xbone/Oculus v1.0 release

Sidenote

I also am one of those who is quite annoyed and amazed with the game at the same time. I'm actually running into multiple random CTD's, which are starting to drive me bonkers, mostly because I'm doing a Let's Play. So when the game decides to randomly crash, the recording is still there... However, the save file is obviously not up to date. Forcing me to go trough the recorded video to get back to where I was for recording purposes. Last eps (35-37) sitrep:

36min recording 3 crashes (3 separate recordings edited into 1)

25min recording 2 crashes (2 separate recordings edited into 1)

29min recording, crashed during the next ep 38 recording, scrapped that last crash as I was completely fed up with the crashing

I've even mentioned it during the LP that the game is really starting to piss me off, yet do keep playing it because it's drawing me in. So this is indeed an interesting point you're making. Why do we torment ourselves, because it's an awesome game. Although I must say I am getting to the point where I think I want to pause the gameplay because of the constant crashing I'm encountering I can only imaginethe Xbone issues, as it seems quite a bit more unstable on there...

Then the obvious question is: why on earth did they choose Unity? Is it a cost issue?

Also this:
Given that they obviously know that crashes occur, it is baffling that only 1 save file is given. On PC I presume one can finagle with that a bit, but on Xbone it's just the one.

Yep, I'm now actually copy pasting the save file into a back up folder after each episodically save I do. I'm not sure how the file structure is set up on Xbone or if you're even able to open up some kind of explorer. It's running on Windows 10 right, so technically it should have a similar game folder structure...

For Steam it's located in "..\steamapps\common\Subnautica\SNAppData\SavedGames" with folders such as slot0000, slot0001 etc...

Unity was used because it was more than likely the easiest to work with and the most cost efficient.

The unity engine loads in cells, which load a chunk of raw data into a segment of terrain. Other cells hold objects, props, and all of the sort. This can cause lag on consoles because of the fact of how much subnautica uses at a time. To have your amazing world, it loads terrain, fauna, flora, debris, minerals, wrecks, and other props all at the same time in such a small space. This is how the game was made. It was made for PC, and they're still trying to optimize Xbox. I would either Wait for it to improve, or switch to PC tp fix the graphical lag.

Other than that, there are some things in your explaination I agree with.

And if I can convince my Sisters Boyfriend to buy it on the Xbox, i'll see first hand how graphically strained it is.

================Anomaly================
"Life is a game,
which the universe plays with itself."

I've been playing Subnautica for at least a month now on the Xbox 1x. I've wondered why other games that seem to be considerably more graphically challenging seem to play just fine on the console. I absolutely love the game but it does get challenging when a wreck spawns around your Seamoth and you have to quit and restart to get out. My first time thru the Aurora was frustrating. Fell thru something and was stuck on the wrong side of everything. Scanner room not finding items even though you can go outside and see them. Games not loading from the last save. Lots of things need fixed but I am really enjoying the game right now.